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Fisherguy's avatar
Fisherguy
Explorer
Dec 23, 2022

12 volt fridges and boondocking?

We have a 07 27' Komfort trailer, I put 480 watts of panels on the roof, we have a 600 watt inverter for the Sat TV and 2 GC batteries. The only time we need to fire up the genny is after 2 or 3 days of rain. We only boondock, never have hookups.

I'm on the ORV Facebook group and people there seem to have lotsa money to upgrade their new expensive trailers. 3000 watt inverters, lithium batteries and 12 volt fridges are all the rage.

So now I've found a 2019 ORV with 3 - 100 Ah Lithium batteries, a 12 volt fridge, 600 watts of solar and an automatic sat dish on the roof for sale at (what I think is) a great price. I think the owners travel a lot in the US with full hookups.
It also unfortunately has a Schwintek slide, so I've been researching that but also I'm unsure if the 600 watts of solar would be enough for us when boondocking for 3 or 4 weeks at a time.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks and Merry Christmas
Will
  • JimK-NY's avatar
    JimK-NY
    Explorer II
    Dec 23, 2022
    Doing an audit can be largely guesswork especially if you have not had any experience running that 12v compressor refrigerator. You can start by checking the specs for amperage. A small 4 cuft unit will pull about 3.5 amps. If you camp in cool weather and don't try to cool down room temperature items, you might get by with 30 AH/day. More typical use would be twice that especially when camping in warmer weather. A larger unit is likely to pull well over 100 AH/day.

    You also need to be realistic about how much energy you can expect from your solar unit. I am in NY, at this time of year if we ever have a clear day the maximum output for 600 watts of solar would be less than 100 AH. Lots of my camping in done in the woods with little or no solar even on a good day. You did not mention the size of the battery bank but certainly that needs to be sized appropriately also.

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